In Which We Watch Pippin
May. 18th, 2019 07:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aAlrighty, here's my last delayed journal entry while I've been trying to catch up with life. It's not actually important, but I always write about the plays we see, so I should write about our last play!
It was Pippin, which we saw on at its last showing, 13 days ago. We've fallen into the habit of seeing our musicals at their final performance in large part because we're often waiting for something to improve. It's been a rough several years ... . So we wait. But I've actually come to really enjoy seeing a play's final performance, because it's a performance that has meaning to the cast: it's not just another show. There was a proposal at one of the final performances we saw, and this time, the actor who was making the announcements at the end of the show was choking up.
(Actually, I was very confused to then see signs for the show on May 11th-19th, after it had really definitively closed on May 5th when we saw it, but looking around I now see that was for their teen stage.)
Anyway, Pippin. It's a play-within-a-play. Or, it's somewhat more complex than that. It's about a weird traveling carnival troupe putting on a play about Charlemagne's son, Pippin, but there's a lot of fourth wall breaking throughout, with the carnival barker narrating and commenting, and then the lines get quite blurry late on where Pippin actually seems to be facing off against the carnival members, and it's not entirely clear what's happening at which level of reality. I was quite surprise to find that Pippin was a play from 1972, as the concepts feel a lot more modern.
The play was pretty heavily focused on messaging, because the whole thing was about Pippin trying to have an extraordinary life, and basically never being happy with what he has. I thought it was good messaging, but I really didn't know if I was going to be thrilled with the ending or want to throw it against the wall, because I could see them coming down on the wrong side. (Spoiler: they didn't. Pippin recognized his quest for an extraordinary life was a will-o-the-wisp that was just leaving him unhappy with what he had, which is good messaging. But then his son got dragged in, showing the attraction of these false promises to us when we're young. A great ending, even though it turns out that last bit wasn't in the original play.)
Pippin was much more about story and message than most musicals, but there was music too. I appreciated the rock sensibilities of several songs. A few times they tried to use music and dancing to represent other actions (first fighting, then fu**ing) and that was a modern dance failure. There were also some memorable songs. Well, kinda memorable. Two weeks later I have trouble picking them out from the song list. But "No Time At All" was the best, as it set up the final messaging, by talking about how you have to appreciate what's around you. And it was sung by Berthe, the kick-ass grandma. I know there was at least one other that moved me, but ... not sure what it was now.
Overall, a good play, and a bit unusual.
It was Pippin, which we saw on at its last showing, 13 days ago. We've fallen into the habit of seeing our musicals at their final performance in large part because we're often waiting for something to improve. It's been a rough several years ... . So we wait. But I've actually come to really enjoy seeing a play's final performance, because it's a performance that has meaning to the cast: it's not just another show. There was a proposal at one of the final performances we saw, and this time, the actor who was making the announcements at the end of the show was choking up.
(Actually, I was very confused to then see signs for the show on May 11th-19th, after it had really definitively closed on May 5th when we saw it, but looking around I now see that was for their teen stage.)
Anyway, Pippin. It's a play-within-a-play. Or, it's somewhat more complex than that. It's about a weird traveling carnival troupe putting on a play about Charlemagne's son, Pippin, but there's a lot of fourth wall breaking throughout, with the carnival barker narrating and commenting, and then the lines get quite blurry late on where Pippin actually seems to be facing off against the carnival members, and it's not entirely clear what's happening at which level of reality. I was quite surprise to find that Pippin was a play from 1972, as the concepts feel a lot more modern.
The play was pretty heavily focused on messaging, because the whole thing was about Pippin trying to have an extraordinary life, and basically never being happy with what he has. I thought it was good messaging, but I really didn't know if I was going to be thrilled with the ending or want to throw it against the wall, because I could see them coming down on the wrong side. (Spoiler: they didn't. Pippin recognized his quest for an extraordinary life was a will-o-the-wisp that was just leaving him unhappy with what he had, which is good messaging. But then his son got dragged in, showing the attraction of these false promises to us when we're young. A great ending, even though it turns out that last bit wasn't in the original play.)
Pippin was much more about story and message than most musicals, but there was music too. I appreciated the rock sensibilities of several songs. A few times they tried to use music and dancing to represent other actions (first fighting, then fu**ing) and that was a modern dance failure. There were also some memorable songs. Well, kinda memorable. Two weeks later I have trouble picking them out from the song list. But "No Time At All" was the best, as it set up the final messaging, by talking about how you have to appreciate what's around you. And it was sung by Berthe, the kick-ass grandma. I know there was at least one other that moved me, but ... not sure what it was now.
Overall, a good play, and a bit unusual.